Jewish students Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel (both 16), were abducted while hitchiking in the Israeli occupied West Bank on June 12 and subsequently murdered.   Almost  three weeks later, 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair, anEast Jerusalem Palestinian was kidnapped, beaten and burned to death allegedly arrested Jewish extremists.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, exiled in Qatar, denied knowledge of the Jewish student’s abduction but praised its perpetrators.

Reuters reported today that Saleh al-Arouri, a founder of Hamas’s military wing, took credit for directing and funding the “operation” that initiated the current turmoil in Gaza.

Saleh al-Arouri told delegates at the International Union of Islamic Scholars in Istanbul on Wednesday, “The popular will was exercised throughout our occupied land, and culminated in the heroic operation by the Qassam Brigades in imprisoning the three settlers in Hebron,” he added, “This was an operation from your brothers in Qassam undertaken to aid their brothers on hunger strike in (Israeli) prisons.”